


poetry in dead poets society (1989)

by sledgeroe



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 16:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21479041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sledgeroe/pseuds/sledgeroe
Summary: a little collection of poems from the movie.
Kudos: 27





	1. "She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!


	2. "The Ballad of William Bloat" by Raymond Calvert

In a mean abode on the Skankill Road  
Lived a man named William Bloat;  
He had a wife, the curse of his life,  
Who continually got his goat.  
So one day at dawn, with her nightdress on  
He cut her bloody throat.

With a razor gash he settled her hash  
Oh never was crime so quick  
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip ‘  
Of her lifeblood made him sick.  
And the pool of gore on the bedroom floor  
Grew clotted and cold and thick.

And yet he was glad he had done what he had  
When she lay there stiff and still  
But a sudden awe of the angry law  
Struck his heart with an icy chill.  
So to finish the fun so well begun  
He resolved himself to kill.

He took the sheet from the wife’s coul’ feet  
And twisted it into a rope  
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,  
‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.  
In the face of death with his latest breath  
He solemnly cursed the Pope.

But the strangest turn to the whole concern  
Is only just beginning.  
He went to Hell but his wife got well  
And she’s still alive and sinning.  
For the razor blade was German made  
But the sheet was Belfast linen.


	3. "The Prophet" by Abraham Cowley

Teach me to Love? go teach thy self more wit;  
I am chief Professor of it.  
Teach craft to Scots, and thrift to Jews,  
Teach boldness to the Stews;  
In tyrants courts teach supple flattery,  
Teach Jesuits, that have traveled far, to Lye.  
Teach fire to burn and Winds to blow.  
Teach restless Fountains how to flow,  
Teach the dull earth, fixt, to abide,  
Teach Woman-kind inconstancy and Pride.  
See if your diligence here will useful prove;  
But, pr’ithee, teach not me to love.

The God of Love, if such a thing there be,  
May learn to love from me,  
He who does boast that he has bin,  
In every Heart since Adams sin,  
I’ll lay my Life, nay Mistress on’t, that’s more;  
I’ll teach him things he never knew before;  
I’ll teach him a receipt to make  
Words that weep, and Tears that speak,  
I’ll teach him Sighs, like those in death,  
At which the Souls go out too with the breath;  
Still the Soul stays, yet still does from me run;  
As Light and Heat does with the Sun.

‘Tis I who Love’s Columbus am; ’tis I, Who must new Worlds in it descry;  
Rich Worlds, that yield of Treasure more,  
than that has been known before,  
And yet like his (I fear) my fate must be,  
To find them out for others; not for Me.  
Me Times to come, I know it, shall  
Loves last and greatest prophet call.  
But, ah, what’s that, if she refuse,  
To hear the whole doctrines of my Muse?  
If to my share the Prophets fate must come;  
Hereafter fame, here Martyrdome.


	4. "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.


	5. "To the Virgins" by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry;

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.


	6. "The Congo" by Vachel Lindsay

I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

Hard as they were able,

Boom, boom, BOOM,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank

A thousand miles

Tattooed cannibals danced in files;

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

And “BLOOD” screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,

“BLOOD” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors,

“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,

Harry the uplands,

Steal all the cattle,

Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle,

Bing.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,”

A roaring, epic, rag-time tune

From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant,

Torch-eyed and horrible,

Foam-flanked and terrible.

BOOM, steal the pygmies,

BOOM, kill the Arabs,

BOOM, kill the white men,

HOO, HOO, HOO.

Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost

Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.

Hear how the demons chuckle and yell

Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Listen to the creepy proclamation,

Blown through the lairs of the forest-nation,

Blown past the white-ants’ hill of clay,

Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play: —

“Be careful what you do,

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all of the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.”

II. THEIR IRREPRESSIBLE HIGH SPIRITS

Wild crap-shooters with a whoop and a call

Danced the juba in their gambling-hall

And laughed fit to kill, and shook the town,

And guyed the policemen and laughed them down

With a boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

A negro fairyland swung into view,

A minstrel river

Where dreams come true.

The ebony palace soared on high

Through the blossoming trees to the evening sky.

The inlaid porches and casements shone

With gold and ivory and elephant-bone.

And the black crowd laughed till their sides were sore

At the baboon butler in the agate door,

And the well-known tunes of the parrot band

That trilled on the bushes of that magic land.

A troupe of skull-faced witch-men came

Through the agate doorway in suits of flame,

Yea, long-tailed coats with a gold-leaf crust

And hats that were covered with diamond-dust.

And the crowd in the court gave a whoop and a call

And danced the juba from wall to wall.

But the witch-men suddenly stilled the throng

With a stern cold glare, and a stern old song: —

“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.” ...

Just then from the doorway, as fat as shotes,

Came the cake-walk princes in their long red coats,

Canes with a brilliant lacquer shine,

And tall silk hats that were red as wine.

And they pranced with their butterfly partners there,

Coal-black maidens with pearls in their hair,

Knee-skirts trimmed with the jassamine sweet,

And bells on their ankles and little black-feet.

And the couples railed at the chant and the frown

Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them down.

(O rare was the revel, and well worth while

That made those glowering witch-men smile.)

The cake-walk royalty then began

To walk for a cake that was tall as a man

To the tune of “Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM,”

While the witch-men laughed, with a sinister air,

And sang with the scalawags prancing there: —

“Walk with care, walk with care,

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.

Beware, beware, walk with care,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,

BOOM.”

Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while

That made those glowering witch-men smile.

III. THE HOPE OF THEIR RELIGION

A good old negro in the slums of the town

Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.

Howled at a brother for his low-down ways,

His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.

Beat on the Bible till he wore it out

Starting the jubilee revival shout.

And some had visions, as they stood on chairs,

And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs,

And they all repented, a thousand strong

From their stupor and savagery and sin and wrong

And slammed with their hymn books till they shook the room

With “glory, glory, glory,”

And “Boom, boom, BOOM.”

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil

And showed the Apostles with their coats of mail.

In bright white steel they were seated round

And their fire-eyes watched where the Congo wound.

And the twelve Apostles, from their thrones on high

Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly cry: —

“Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle;

Never again will he hoo-doo you,

Never again will he hoo-doo you.”

Then along that river, a thousand miles

The vine-snared trees fell down in files.

Pioneer angels cleared the way

For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,

For sacred capitals, for temples clean.

Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.

There, where the wild ghost-gods had wailed

A million boats of the angels sailed

With oars of silver, and prows of blue

And silken pennants that the sun shone through.

’Twas a land transfigured, ’twas a new creation.

Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation

And on through the backwoods clearing flew: —

“Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle.

Never again will he hoo-doo you.

Never again will he hoo-doo you.

Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and the men,

And only the vulture dared again

By the far, lone mountains of the moon

To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:—

“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,

“Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.

Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.”


	7. "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


	8. "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


	9. "Walden; or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau

_I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion._


	10. "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.


	11. "O Me! O Life!" by Walt Whitman

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

_ Answer._

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.


End file.
